The FTE Illusion

Working as an Agile coach I am often told by Scrum Masters or Product Owners how they cannot understand how a 5-person team cannot become as productive as they should be in Scrum.

Lately, I have been asking the follow up question: Do you count FTE (Full-time Equivalent) or actual persons when you say “a 5- person team”?

Within companies people are often considered to be resources (hence the department Human Resources). The problem I see with this is that humans are NOT resources at all. We cannot assume that one person can be equally effective when they have to work in four teams at the same time.

FTE is effective if you want to reduce costs or to throw a wannabe project a bone, or to give your program director a project plan that looks favorable enough to get the funding you need to get started. Within Agile however the FTE illusion is the cause of a lot of pain. [...]

To read the whole post and interact, please visit the SogetiLabs blog: The FTE Illusion